1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a web-based information sharing system; and more particularly, to a computer interface enabling companies and consumers to share brand information over the World Wide Web.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Advertising offers value to the consumer by introducing the consumer to new products, about which the consumer would not otherwise be informed. At times, these may even be essential products that substantially benefit the consumer's health, finances, and quality of life. Notably, over the past fifty years, the nature of advertising has been evolving to reflect the increasing sophistication and technological innovation characteristic of today's media. To a certain extent, today, advertising can even be characterized as an art form. Advertising has become more pervasive and the consumer's acceptance of advertising has increased.
One recent advertising development is the use of movies as a medium for brand reinforcement. For example, the popular movie, “E.T.” shows a character clearly eating Hershey's Reese's Pieces®, rather than a generic chocolate candy. Characters in the movie, “The Client”, reach for clearly labeled soda products to calm themselves. The movie, the “Matrix” features telephones identifiable as Nokia® brand. Consumers seem to accept this form of advertising, as adding realism to the story a movie has to tell, as long as it doesn't involve potentially harmful products such as alcohol or cigarettes. In addition, consumers gladly purchase memorabilia related to movies and television shows such as Mickey Mouse watches, E.T. dolls, and Spiderman costumes, which are in and of themselves, a form of advertising. Consumers have adopted advertisements as status goods so that the line between advertisement and product has become blurred.
Most recently, the World Wide Web (Web) has become an additional medium for brand reinforcement. However, studies show that pop-up ads and banner ads, along with unsolicited email, annoy consumers and may provide limited benefit to the advertising companies. Consumers are ready for a method of interacting creatively with brand information, particularly graphical information, over the Web and advertisers are equally anxious for the instant consumer feedback the Web can provide. Advances in software and hardware, as well as an increase in available bandwidth, now make this feasible. In addition, consumers seem to welcome using the Web as a means to share their evaluation of products whether through the form of book reviews on amazon.com or product evaluations on a wide variety of sites. The prior art describes some attempts to use the Web for sharing information.
Video conferencing was an early attempt to enable users to interact and share documents over the Web. Collaborative video conferencing software currently exists which enables individuals, located at physically dispersed locations, to view the same data over the Web and to modify it. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,777 B1 to Skarbo et al., entitled “Method for Web Based Storage and Retrieval of Documents,” describes a method by which a presenter can share a file with other conference attendees and update the shared document with the changes made to the document during the conference sharing. A document server incorporates a revision control system to allow a history of the documents to be maintained on the server. The server can present a list of current document versions as well as previous versions, thereby allowing the attendees to review the document in all its previous forms.
Also known in the art are networked systems, which enable conference attendees to create or modify information and to share it over the Web. For example, attendees can draw on a whiteboard accessible to all the attendees, using standard geometric shapes such as lines and circles. The attendees can exchange not only text files but also, video, audio, and graphics files. Further, the attendees can communicate via a chat function, which is a real-time, interactive, textual based conference tool that allows attendees to post messages to each other in a shared area. Such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,091 B1 to Harple et al. entitled “Apparatus for Collaborative Computing.”
More recently, focus groups, which are discussions that enable marketers to acquire feedback from a group of participants regarding new products, are being conducted over the Web. U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,663 to Davis entitled “System and Method for Conducting Focus Groups Using Remotely Loaded Participants Over a Computer Network” describes how a chat function can be used to implement a focus group. In the described system, the focus group members, the group moderator, and the client presenting the new product are all located remotely from each other and communicate via the Web. The focus group members can view the messages each member transmits but cannot view the messages the client and moderator transmit to each other.
Consumers are now ready for an online environment in which they can creatively express and communicate their feelings about products as members of a virtual community. Specifically, what the prior art does not provide is a computer network based system that enables the consumer to modify brand information in a way that instantly reflects the consumer's thoughts, wishes, and desires for what the brand should be, and also rewards the consumer for the consumer's efforts. Also needed is a computer network based environment for immediately communicating the consumer's input to both other consumers and the advertiser. Further needed is the ability to easily adapt this system to any brand desired.